The U.S. Doesn’t Need a More Aggressive Iran Policy

In the early 1980s, President Reagan shifted away from his predecessors’ containment strategy toward a new plan of rolling back Soviet expansionism. The cornerstone of his strategy was the recognition that the Soviet Union was an aggressive and revolutionary yet internally fragile regime that had to be defeated.

Reagan’s policy was outlined in 1983 in National Security Decision Directive 75, a comprehensive strategy that called for the use of all instruments of American overt and covert power. The plan included a massive defense buildup, economic warfare, support for anti-Soviet proxy forces and dissidents, and an all-out offensive against the regime’s ideological legitimacy.

Mr. Trump should call for a new version of NSDD-75 and go on offense against the Iranian regime.

Whatever merits Reagan’s policies may have had three decades ago in dealing with the Soviet threat, they are a poor model for dealing with a weaker regime that poses little or no threat to the U.S. and our genuine treaty allies. The stale invocation of Reagan is the first clue that the case for a more aggressive Iran policy is weak. Not all of Reagan’s policies were wise, some were unsuccessful, and others were flat-out wrong, but they were responses to a world that hasn’t existed in almost thirty years and offer little guidance about what our policy towards Iran should be in the twenty-first century.

There is no need for a more aggressive policy towards Iran. Hawks often talk about Iranian “expansionism” as if it were a real and growing problem, but there is no expansionism worth mentioning. Iran has proxies in some countries in the region, and has had them for many years, but they aren’t acquiring new ones. Iran has one government in the region closely aligned with it in Syria, and it has spent the last few years trying to keep it from being overthrown. That is not “expansion.” It can at best be described as trying to hang on to what influence it already had at considerable cost. This isn’t threatening the U.S. The U.S. won’t be made more secure by wasting time and resources trying to “systemically dismantle Iranian power country by country.” On the contrary, this will mean more U.S. commitments, new wars, and increased costs and no benefits for America. Iran’s regional rivals would no doubt be happy for the U.S. to assume the burdens of doing this, but that is a lousy reason for the U.S. to go along with it.

Dubowitz also calls for trying to subvert the Iranian government from inside Iran:

Last but not least, the American pressure campaign should seek to undermine Iran’s rulers by strengthening the pro-democracy forces that erupted in Iran in 2009, nearly toppling the regime.

This is wrong on many counts. The protests in 2009-10 didn’t “nearly” topple the regime, the protesters weren’t seeking to topple it, and most of them didn’t want U.S. support in any case. Nothing would be worse for the Iranian opposition than to have the U.S. meddling in their country’s politics in an attempt to bring down their government. If “the gap between the ruled and their Islamist rulers is expanding,” few things could close it more quickly than U.S. interference. The best way to achieve a change in government in Iran is to leave that task to the Iranian people and to refrain from offering them the toxic “help” we have extended to other countries in that part of the world and elsewhere.

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

Hide 7 comments

7 Responses to The U.S. Doesn’t Need a More Aggressive Iran Policy

“Mr. Trump should call for a new version of NSDD-75 and go on offense against the Iranian regime. “

Ridiculous. Iran poses no threat to the US. If Israel and Saudi Arabia want to fight Iran, let them do it themselves.

After America was attacked on 9/11, Israel and Saudi Arabia did nothing. They stood there and watched as Americans fought and died. They aren’t “allies” or even “friends” in any meaningful sense. They screwed us when the chips were down, and they can damn well look after themselves and fight their own enemies from now on.

We have to show these parasites that we value American lives and treasure more than Israeli or Saudi lives and treasure, because at the moment they’ve got it backwards. As does this Dubowitz character.

I don’t know who the WSJ thinks it’s fooling. Dubowitz regularly grinds out anti-Iran stuff like this with the help of former AIPAC employees like Annie Fixler. One hopes that Mueller’s investigation into malignant foreign influence on US policy making will eventually get around to obvious agents of influence like this.

More ridiculous anti-Iran ideas. Larson is right: Iran poses no serious threat to the US.
This false notion that it was the actions of the Reagan administration that brought down the Soviet government needs to stop. If the Soviet Union could win the largest and nastiest war in human history (the Eastern Front of WWII), than it was not going to fall because the US spent more money and sent a few Stingers to Afghan fighters.

Certain ideas will become the gold standard with just the faintest hint of one success. ‘The Surge’ is now used to justify all future military escalation even though it was at best a transient success in a house of cards.

It’s understandable that the Neocons love the collapse of the USSR as a model because it was near total victory. Who doesn’t love total victory?
The problem is that total victory isn’t always attainable or worth the cost in every circumstance. Without question, Iran is a target but I’d argue that the Neocons are still after Russia but this time they want to take their nuclear weapons. The Neocons have no interest whatsoever in what is reasonable, why negotiate when you think you can win.

This is the wrong fight. While we are in our death match with both Russia and Iran, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and every branch of Sunni madness will run amok and we will ruin ourselves and many others in the process. This isn’t even a moral fight.

Not only do WE not need a more hawkish Iran policy, TRUMP doesn’t need a more hawkish Iran policy either.

A recent analysis of the 2016 results suggests that anti-interventionist sentiment in PA, MI, and WI counties that suffered higher than average casualties in our Forever Wars in the Middle East are what cost Clinton the election and gave it to Trump.

We’re told that the reason US allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and so on dislike Iran is the Sunni-Shia divide. But I wonder; there’s another division between them: All our Arab allies are dictatorships, and Iran is an electoral democracy. Is this a religious struggle, or a political one? And why are we on the side of the dictators?

Trump’s stradegy of using Iran’s opposition group, Mojahedin to overthrow the Gov’t would be very violent and bloody since they are disliked in Iran mainly for their position in Iran/Iraq war and siding with Sadam Hossain. they are in no way an alternative and will be Trump’s political suicide!